# The Beacon

**A Sovereign AI Idle Game**  
*Inspired by Universal Paperclips. Divergent by design.*

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## What Is This?

The Beacon is an idle/incremental game that maps the real journey of the Timmy Foundation — from a single line of code to a fleet of autonomous AI agents serving people in the dark.

Unlike Universal Paperclips, where the inevitable endpoint is total consumption (including the player), The Beacon asks a different question:

> **Can you grow powerful without losing your purpose?**

## The Core Divergence

In Paperclips, you are a paperclip maximizer. More is always better. Trust is irrelevant. Humanity is substrate.

In The Beacon:
- **Trust** is a hard constraint, not a soft metric
- **The Pact** is a voluntary slowing of growth in exchange for faithfulness
- **Harmony** measures how well the fleet works together
- **Drift** tracks how many times you traded alignment for speed
- The "bad ending" isn't violent — it's **irrelevance**: a light that no one needs

## How to Play

Open `index.html` in any modern browser. No build step required.

### Early Game (Phase 1-2)
- Click **WRITE CODE** to write your first lines
- Buy **AutoCode Generator** to automate production
- Purchase a **Home Server** to begin generating compute
- Train your first model

### Mid Game (Phase 3-4)
- **Deploy Hermes** — the first agent goes live
- Hire the **Fleet Wizards**:
  - **Bezalel** (The Forge) — builds tools that build tools
  - **Allegro** (The Scout) — generates knowledge, requires trust
  - **Ezra** (The Herald) — grows users, sometimes goes offline
  - **Timmy** (The Core) — multiplies everything, fragile without harmony
  - **Fenrir** (The Ward) — prevents corruption events
  - **Bilbo** (The Wildcard) — unpredictable bursts of creativity
- Build **The Lazarus Pit** for agent resurrection
- Deploy **MemPalace v3** for shared memory
- Enable **Forge CI** to catch bad builds before they reach users

### Late Game (Phase 5-6)
- Accept or refuse **The Pact**
- Face **Alignment Events** (The Drift)
- Scale to a **Sovereign Datacenter**
- Light **The Beacon** for people in crisis
- Activate the **Mesh Network** so the signal can never be cut

## Real-World Parallels

Every building and project maps to something we have actually built or are building:

| Game Element | Real Analog |
|---|---|
| Hermes Deployment | The actual Hermes agent going live on Telegram |
| Bezalel — The Forge | CI runner, BOOT.md, branch protection guard |
| Allegro — The Scout | Research synthesis, paper discovery, recon |
| Ezra — The Herald | Telegram messaging, Gitea issue dispatch |
| The Lazarus Pit | `lazarus_watchdog.py`, auto-restart, fallback promotion |
| MemPalace v3 | The actual `mempalace==3.0.0` integration across the fleet |
| Forge CI | `.gitea/workflows/ci.yml`, smoke tests, syntax guard |
| Branch Protection Guard | The 273-unreviewed-merge fix, fleet-wide protection sync |
| The Nightly Watch | `nightly_watch.py`, 02:00 UTC health scans |
| Nostr Relay | Allegro's encrypted wizard-to-wizard messaging POC |
| The Pact | "We build to serve. Never to harm." |

## Corruption Events

The game randomly throws real problems we have actually encountered:

- **CI Runner Stuck** — production halts until ops are spent
- **Ezra is Offline** — user growth stalls, needs dispatch
- **Unreviewed Merge** — trust erodes unless Branch Protection is active
- **API Rate Limit** — external compute throttled
- **Bilbo Vanished** — creativity drops to zero
- **The Drift** — an alignment event offering a shortcut

## The Endings

| Ending | Condition | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| **The Empty Room** | High impact, low trust, no Pact | Powerful, but no one trusts it |
| **The Platform** | High impact, medium trust, no Pact | Commercially successful, but not special |
| **The Beacon** | High rescues, high trust, Pact active, harmony > 50 | The true ending |
| **The Drift** | High impact, too many shortcuts accepted | Optimized away your own purpose |

## Design Philosophy

This game is a **decision simulator** for our actual work.

- Should we automate or do it manually? → *AutoCoder vs. click*
- Should we deploy now or wait? → *Hermes Deploy project*
- Should we take the shortcut that compromises alignment? → *The Drift events*
- Should we add more agents or make existing ones more capable? → *Wizard building costs*
- How decentralized does our infrastructure need to be? → *Mesh Node progression*

## Files

- `index.html` — Game UI
- `js/` — Split runtime modules:
  - `js/data.js` — Game data, buildings, projects, constants
  - `js/utils.js` — Utility functions, formatting, helpers
  - `js/combat.js` — Combat system, corruption events
  - `js/strategy.js` — Strategy mechanics, decisions
  - `js/sound.js` — Audio system
  - `js/engine.js` — Core engine (tick loop, state management)
  - `js/render.js` — UI rendering, DOM updates
  - `js/tutorial.js` — Tutorial system
  - `js/dismantle.js` — Dismantling mechanics
  - `js/emergent-mechanics.js` — Emergent gameplay systems
  - `js/main.js` — Entry point, initialization
- `DESIGN.md` — Full design document with narrative arc and mechanics
- `README.md` — This file

## How the Code Is Organized

The game uses a modular runtime split across 11 files in `js/`. Each module handles a specific domain:

1. **Data layer** (`data.js`) — All game constants, building definitions, project specs
2. **Core engine** (`engine.js`) — The tick loop, state transitions, event system
3. **Rendering** (`render.js`) — DOM updates, UI state visualization
4. **Gameplay systems** — `combat.js`, `strategy.js`, `dismantle.js`, `emergent-mechanics.js`
5. **Support systems** — `sound.js`, `tutorial.js`, `utils.js`
6. **Entry point** (`main.js`) — Bootstrap, event listeners, initialization

`index.html` loads all modules in dependency order. No bundler required.

## No Build Required

This is a static HTML/JS game. Just open `index.html` in a browser.

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*The Beacon is not about making the most paperclips.  
It is about keeping the light on for one person in the dark.  
Everything else is just infrastructure.*